Roasted sweet potato sales are surging in the middle of summer, driven by the spread of the "healthy pleasure" trend — enjoying health management in an easy and enjoyable way. As demand for health management grows, the seasonal boundaries around certain products are breaking down, and cigarettes, long the mainstay of convenience store sales, are seeing their share shrink. The formula behind convenience store sales is changing.
According to BGF Retail on the 19th, sales of roasted sweet potatoes at CU jumped 67.4% in the third quarter through the 17th of this month compared with the same period a year earlier. Roasted sweet potatoes, along with steamed buns, are a classic winter item, but their summer sales are also rising sharply. The increase was especially pronounced during the recent heat wave, reaching 63.9% from the 27th of last month through the 9th of this month compared with the same period a year earlier — meaning the sales gains continued regardless of the heat. CU's roasted sweet potato sales growth rate stayed in the 20% range through the third quarter of last year, but accelerated from the fourth quarter.
CU sees the healthy pleasure culture translating into sales. When the company examined which products customers bought together with roasted sweet potatoes, banana milk ranked first, followed by bananas, half-boiled eggs, white milk and chicken breast. All of the second- through fifth-ranked items, except banana milk, are closely tied to diet management. "Sweet potatoes are a classic diet food that people turn to when controlling the type and amount of carbohydrates they eat," a CU official said. "Thanks to demand from people trying to build their diets around quality protein and carbohydrates such as eggs, chicken breast and white milk, roasted sweet potato sales are surging even in the middle of summer."
The industry's long-standing assumption that cigarettes account for 40% of convenience store sales is also being shaken. According to BGF Retail's earnings report, cigarettes' share of CU sales fell nearly 5 percentage points, from 40.8% in 2020 to 35.9% in the second quarter of this year. After the 40% line was broken in 2021 at 39.5%, the share held in the high 30% range for a time, but has now dropped to a level where it is hard to call it roughly 40%. The space vacated by cigarettes was filled by fresh and processed foods. While cigarettes' share of sales fell 1.2 percentage points over the past year, the combined share of fresh and processed foods rose 1.3 percentage points — fresh food up 0.4 percentage point and processed food up 0.9 percentage point.
At GS25, sales of food and beverages related to weight and health management are also rising markedly. Through August 17 this year, GS25's salad product sales grew 38.5% from the same period a year earlier, while chicken breast rose 20.3%. Protein drink sales climbed 27.9%.
Protein drinks in particular overtook banana milk products in the first half of this year to become, for the first time, the top-selling category among GS25's processed milk products. In the first half, protein drink sales exceeded banana milk sales by 3.7%. Compared with the chocolate milk and strawberry milk categories that trail banana milk, protein drinks posted sales 44.6% and 158% higher, respectively.
The market for health-related foods is also growing steadily. The health functional food market in particular expanded from 3.2552 trillion won in 2016 to 5.9626 trillion won last year. Separately, the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation (aT) analyzed that, broken down by ingredient, the markets for vitamins, body-fat-reduction foods and protein are growing.
In line with this trend, the industry is reinforcing its health-related product lines and working to capture the demand. After starting to sell health functional foods at some 6,000 stores in July last year, CU plans to add more than 2,000 additional stores carrying such products this year. It is also pursuing a "Healthcare 2.0 strategy" that expands natural fruit concentrates and health-related foods developed in partnership with pharmaceutical companies.
GS25 is also expanding its product planning to reflect the health management trend in popular categories such as gimbap. Following tuna-and-egg gimbap and egg-and-pollack-roe-mayo gimbap in the second quarter of this year, GS25 rolled out cheese pork cutlet gimbap and other products last month with protein content raised to 15 to 17 grams, double the previous level. The number of protein drink items it carries has grown from three in 2020 to about 50 now.
Seven-Eleven also launched a healthy convenience meal brand called "BalanSpoon" in May to target the healthy pleasure crowd. It offers products such as half-boiled egg roll sandwiches, chicken breast roll sandwiches and egg-packed salads, fortified with ingredients such as protein and dietary fiber. Seven-Eleven is conducting research and development to expand its BalanSpoon lineup, which currently comprises nine items.
"Judging by sales trends, the healthy pleasure trend is spreading further," an industry official said. "Coupled with the popularity of weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, health management will become a long-term consumption trend."
